Counseling

Biblical Blueprints believes that Christians should derive all axioms, goals, methods, and values of counseling from the Bible alone. Unfortunately, just as the Baal worshippers of ancient Israel integrated the worldly wisdom of Baalism with Scripture and thought they were being faithful to God, today you find seminaries, pastors and Christian psychologists who have integrated the religion of psychology with the religion of Christianity. Many people will object that this accusation is not fair. But psychology is indeed a religion. Many professors of psychology have admitted that themselves. It has been more and more recognized by humanists that psychology is the substitute religion for the modern man.

For example, Thomas Szasz, a famous professor of psychology at State University in New York, who also edits a major journal of psychology, said, “Psychology… [is] a religion that pretends to be a science.” He insists that “the human relations we now call 'psychotherapy' are, in fact, matters of religion ...” He speaks of how utterly irreconcilable psychology and Christianity are. They are mutually exclusive religions. In one place he pointed out how this new religion wants no competitors. He spoke of "the implacable resolve of psychotherapy to rob religion of as much as it can, and to destroy what it cannot." Psychology wants no competitors. Victor von Weizsaeker said, “C.G. Jung was the first to understand that psychoanalysis belonged in the sphere of religion.” Dr. Paul Vitz, professor of psychology and head of the department of psychology at New York University has written an entire book demonstrating that psychology is a religion. It is titled, Psychology as Religion: the Cult of Self-Worship. When Christian pastors merge psychology with Christianity they are unwittingly engaging in syncretism – the mixture of false religion with true. They may not be intending to do so, but that is the net result. Martin Gross wrote, “When educated man lost faith in formal religion, he required a substitute belief that would be as reputable in the last half of the twentieth century as Christianity was in the first. Psychology and Psychiatry have now assumed that role.”

Biblical Blueprints disagrees with the efforts of those who try to sieve pure water from the mud of psychology with the mantra, “all truth is God’s truth.” The reality is that while there are many “true” things that humanists say, only the Scripture is “truth.” The starting point for Christianity must not be the assertions of man but must be the assertions of God. The Bible does not say, “Your Word is true” (as if we can judge the truthfulness of God by some man-made criteria), but “Your Word is truth” (John 17:17; Psalm 119:160), which means that all truth claims must be judged by the Word of God. It is the standard for truth. Wayne Grudem wisely distinguished between “true” and “truth”:

The difference is significant, for this statement encourages us to think of the bible not simply as being “true” in the sense that it conforms to some higher standard of truth, but rather to think of the Bible as being itself the final standard of truth. The Bible is God’s Word, and God’s Word is the ultimate definition of what is true and what is not true: God’s Word is itself truth. Thus we are to think of the Bible as the ultimate standard of truth, the reference point by which every other claim to truthfulness is to be measured. Those assertions that conform to Scripture are ‘true’ while those that do not conform to Scripture are not true. What then is truth? Truth is what God says.”

This is why Jesus called the Bible “the key of knowledge” (Luke. 11:52). If Christians would spend as many hours studying what the Bible says about counseling as they do studying psychology, they would be experts in using this key of knowledge. The Bible is sufficient and more than sufficient to equip the man of God for every good work (2Tim. 3:15-17).

An Approach to Extended Memorization of Scripture

It is my prayer that God will raise up a generation of people who do this labor, thus presenting themselves to God as those approved, workmen who do not need to be ashamed, and who correctly handle the Word of Truth. ( cf. 2 Timothy 2:15) The lost in our nation and the weak and immature churches which have so proliferated are in deep need of the meat of the Word and those qualified to give it to them. May God bless your diligence and hard work!